“My world.” He gazed down at me. “I never really let you see your own.”
38
Nico left the next morning. I stood in the window and watched the black town car pull out. He hadn’t wanted me to drive him to the airport. He’d slept in the guest room, and I saw now that this was how he would be. That was Nic’s way, his defense. He’d grieve alone. That’s one of the reasons I’d been drawn to him in the first place. I understood the way he hid his vulnerability. He’d cut me off. His pride would make me nonexistent. Some other girl would worship him and together they’d go to Greece. The thought brought a sting of jealousy, a helpless urgency to run after him. But beneath that, I felt something deeper: relief, reprieve.
“I’m going out for a little while,” I told Jamie and Luke when I got downstairs. They were sitting on the couch together, like they’d been doing for two days.
“Out?” She looked startled. She’d been clinging to me since my dad died. “Out where?”
I saw Luke take her hand. “That’s fine,” he told me. “We’ll be here when you get back.”
* * *
“Excuse me,” I said to the triage nurse. Her long dark hair wasn’t tied back and I thought that must be some kind of health code violation. “Can you tell me where I might find Dr. Griffith?”
“You’re in luck.” My eyes followed her pencil. “He’s right there.” She was pointing across the hall, where he was leaning on a counter, talking on the phone. I walked over to him, and he startled, mumbled something into the receiver, then hung up. He was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, and deep wrinkles spread out from those piercing blue eyes like a road map. His hair, which had been thinning and black so many years before, was a faint ring. He still had that curved scar. When he spoke, it was as if he’d been expecting me.
“Jensen. Let’s go to my office.”
I followed him down a brightly lit hallway to a small room. He waited for me to enter, then closed the door. I had the strange, sudden thought that he might kill me. He motioned to a straight-backed chair with a brocade cushion, and I sat. I watched him take a seat on the other side of his desk, leaving a thick mahogany barrier between us.
“I kept thinking I saw you over the summer while my dad was sick, but I wasn’t sure. And then I did see you … at his funeral.” I waited for him to say something, to give me an explanation or offer his condolences, but he just tapped his pen on the desk. “Thanks for coming,” I said.
“I had a feeling when you saw me at your father’s service that you’d come here. I guess, in a way, I’ve been waiting thirteen years for this moment.” He tapped the pen one last time before putting it down. “The night your brother died, this place was a madhouse.” His voice sounded loud in the tiny room, and my stomach tightened at the mention of Will. He made a temple of his hands and rested his chin on his index fingers. “When he came in the first time, we had an MVA involving a bus of senior citizens going to the casino.” A thin line of sweat stood out on his top lip. “We were up to our ears in broken hips and concussions. Radiology was backed up for hours.”
The burning feeling in my stomach felt like it would eat through me. There was something about this man. I remembered how he hadn’t looked at anyone when he’d told us about Will thirteen years ago. Now he leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head, his gaze fixed on the middle distance between us. “Because Will suffered a head trauma on the football field, I ordered an MRI of his brain, then did a full neurological workup. Other than a mild headache, he seemed to have no residual effects from the impact. His balance was excellent, he wasn’t dizzy, and his pupils were working properly. He had no signs of impairment.” I thought it was odd that after such a long time, he remembered so much about my brother.
And then I realized he was going to confront me. I heard Luke’s voice telling me the only way to freedom was to confess your lies. “Listen,” I said.
But Dr. Griffith put his hand up to stop me. “I’m going to say this once.” His eyes nailed me to my seat. “I could lose my medical license for telling you this, my reputation.…” He took a sharp breath in. “The fact is”—he blinked—“I never saw your brother’s scan that night. The film and report were misplaced somehow.” He spoke quickly, defensively. “Radiology was backed up, so we couldn’t do another. And he seemed fine. So I released him. Then he died, and I couldn’t understand it, because he’d presented with a normal neuro exam. That’s why I asked about a second trauma.”
My head felt like a balloon as I listened, and I didn’t know if I was hearing him correctly.
“A few days later, Will’s scans showed up on my desk. Apparently they’d been filed under the wrong name.” He held his pen again and his lip twitched. Finally, he looked right at me. “Your brother had sustained a subdural hematoma during the game.”
I didn’t understand what he was saying. “What does that mean?”
“Will had a brain bleed on the football field. That’s what killed him.”
“No,” I said, loudly enough to startle us both.
“Yes,” Ron Griffith said. “The injury on the field caused a slow bleed at the base of his skull, which is what killed him. I would have seen it if I’d been able to check his MRI, but he seemed okay, and I didn’t want to keep him here for hours while I waited for someone to redo the scan. We didn’t even have enough beds.” I watched his eyelid twitch. “I read about your father in the paper and went to his funeral because all these years, I’d wanted to tell your parents that I’d misdiagnosed their son.” His forehead was wet with sweat. “I wanted to tell them I was wrong and that I was sorry. I should have made Will stay here until I read his scan. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. We can’t, of course, reverse something like that, which is why I never told your parents.” His face had turned an odd pale color. “To have hope that your child is okay and then…” He cleared his throat.
“But he was fine when we got home. His head didn’t even hurt that much.”
He massaged his temples with his pointer fingers. “That’s the thing about brain injuries. It’s rare, but sometimes there are no symptoms at all. The only way to diagnose them is with a scan.”
The room was so quiet, I could hear the ticking of his watch. He took his glasses off and placed them on his desk as if they were made of eggshells.
“It was me.” I could barely hear my own voice. “I pushed Will later that night and he hit his head.” I felt suffocated in that tiny space. “It was my fault.”
He shook his head. “It had nothing to do with that.”
“Yes, it did.” My tone was accusatory. “You said so. You kept asking if he’d had another accident.” I sat on my hands. “I pushed him, and he hit his head on the hearth. And then he died. Right there.”
“The hematoma was so massive that it was only a matter of time,” Ron Griffith told me. “If he fell when you pushed him, it was probably because the pressure in his brain affected his balance. You need to understand this, Jensen. Will would have collapsed and died even if you hadn’t pushed him.” He paused, waiting for me to understand. “Nothing, not even surgery, could have saved him. Basically, your brother was dead as soon as he got hit on the field.”
I stared at him, at his scar and the odd, shifty way his eyes slipped from mine. For the first time, I remembered that Will had wavered when he came at Ryder; he’d faltered, as though off balance, as though drunk. His words had been a little slurred, and I remembered thinking it was the anger, the rage. I could see the weave of Dr. Griffith’s shirt, a small rip starting in the corner of his pocket. It dawned on me in his antiseptic office that my father had been right; it wasn’t my fault. It. Wasn’t. My. Fault.
“I would have told the truth had I known you thought you were responsible. But you were so adamant that nothing else had happened.” He put his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “If it would help, I’ll talk to your mother.”
“That’s not necessary.” I stood; I couldn’t look at him any
longer. I went to the door and stared at the pattern in the wood grain. I was about to tell him how his mistake had ruined my life, but then he spoke up. “Miss Reilly,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
39
When I got back to the parking garage, it was like I’d never been there before. I couldn’t remember which floor I’d parked on. Basically, your brother was dead, Dr. Griffith’s voice chanted in my head, as soon as he got hit on the field.
Tires squealed on the floor above me, echoing against the concrete walls. I walked until I saw an elevator, got on, and went up a floor. The doors opened. Three giggling teenagers got in.
“Ma’am?” the tallest one said.
I was standing with one foot on the pavement and one foot still in the elevator. I could hear the soft clicking of the doors trying to close. “Sorry.” I stepped out, feeling dizzy, drugged. My car was under a spray-painted number, which was a faded daffodil color: R4. It took me three tries to turn the key in the ignition. My hands were slippery with sweat. Backing out of the parking space, I saw myself in the rearview mirror; my skin was colorless as parchment.
I thought about how I woke up screaming from the image of Will’s head hitting the stone. I’d spent so long feeling haunted by what Ryder and I had done, hunted even, that I couldn’t reconcile this new information. I used to think if I could take it back, if I could have made it so it wasn’t my fault, everything would fall into place. I circled down the exit ramp, the steering wheel almost unmanageable in my hands.
“How’s your dad?” a skinny kid asked when I gave him the parking stub and a five-dollar bill.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Your dad?” He rested his hand on the edge of the booth and smiled. He was missing a bottom tooth. He was the one who’d let me go without my ticket the first time my father was in the hospital in June.
“He died,” I said, my voice flat and stiff.
“Jesus.” He stood up like he’d been struck. “Sorry.”
The striped lever rose, and I drove through, turning right on Howard Avenue. Stoplights blended together, and it wasn’t until a horn screamed that I realized I’d run a red light. It had all been a waste: running away from my parents, leaving Ryder, my missed ride to Juilliard, Nic. And what had I been running from? Nothing. Above me, the tree line was a brown blur of branches, and the sun was trying to poke through a heavy film of clouds.
* * *
His car was in the driveway, parked in front of the garage. I pulled in behind it and got out. I was on my way across the lawn when Ryder opened the front door. He was in jeans and wasn’t wearing a shirt. I saw the number 18 on his bicep, and it made a hard lump rise in my throat.
“I was just on my way over. Are you okay?”
“I have something to tell you,” I said.
He opened the door wider. I walked into the living room. It was the first time I’d been inside his house since I’d been back. He wasn’t kidding when he said he’d gutted the place. The southwest wall was now a set of French doors and floor-to-ceiling windows. He must have cut down thirty trees, because the view of the harbor was spectacular. “Sit down and let me get you a sweater.” He stared at me. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m not cold,” I told him, but still he started for the stairs. I reached up and grabbed his arm. “It wasn’t our fault,” I said.
He turned back and squinted at me.
“I just saw him.”
“Ron Griffith?”
I nodded. Ryder backed up. “He never saw Will’s MRI the night of the accident. Someone misplaced it and radiology was backed up. Will looked and felt okay, so Griffith let him go.” Ryder’s eyes went very dark. “A few days later, someone found the scans and put them on his desk.” I could hear my voice trembling, my insides shaking. “Will had a brain bleed from getting hit on the football field. Griffith said it was so big that he would have died anyway. It was just a matter of time.”
Ryder had gotten angry very rarely when we were younger. But if people cheated at a game, called points that weren’t theirs, or when the neighborhood kids used to bully the autistic boy on North Parker, he’d get mad fast and as thoroughly as if he were infused with some explosive. Now the blood rushed to his face, and it turned bright red. “That fucking bastard.” He backed away from me. “That squirrelly fucking asshole.” He was running his hand through his hair. “How does a doctor lose a scan? What the fuck does that mean? Radiology was backed up?” He was facing me, but I could tell he wasn’t really seeing me. “You don’t lose scans, Jensen. You stay all night until you find them. Do you understand me? Do you know what this means? Do you? All that fucking time, I felt like a murderer. I went through medical school trying to prove myself.” His chest was splotched from anger. “All those fucking late nights, trying to save people who couldn’t be saved. And that asshole never saw the fucking scans? Never saw them? Never called us back when he found them?” I thought he was going to break something. Or cry. “I’ll strangle him.” He picked up a shirt from the back of the sofa. “I’m going to kill him.” He started for the front door.
“Ryder,” I said. I caught his arm, but he swiped it away. “Ryder!” I yelled at him. For one terrifying moment, I thought he might hit me. “Ryder,” I said again, softer this time. “It’s me.” He didn’t look away. His eyes started to clear. “It’s me, Jenny.” Stepping into him, I felt him relax.
And then he collapsed against me. I felt him bury his face in my neck. “Don’t you know what this means?” he asked again. “We could have been together. We could have…”
“I’m here now,” I told him. “We can’t go back.” I kissed his neck, kissed his earlobe, his jaw. His hands had been at his sides, but slowly he moved them up my back, tangling his fingers in my hair. A cloud must have moved away from the sun, because the room lightened slightly.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “I can’t fucking lose you again.” He kissed my collarbone, felt my rib cage with his hands. “I can’t.”
“Nic left yesterday.”
“He did? Why?” He kissed my earlobe. “You know what, I don’t care. You can stay married forever and have me on the side.”
“Do you know what a petition of dissolution is?” I tasted his lips, his sweet Ryder taste. He groaned.
“No, what?” He kissed me again.
“It means I filed for divorce.” I put my mouth to his ear and whispered, “We’re free.”
He quit kissing me. Then he took hold of my waist and set me in front of him. And in that moment, Ryder became Ryder again, that boy I had known as a child, the one with those trusting dark eyes, the boy who was so sure of the goodness life had to offer him. Then he started laughing. He picked me up and twirled me around and around, kissing me and kissing me and kissing me.
And finally there was nothing else in the world except for Ryder and me, undressing each other as we fumbled up the stairs, down the hall, into his old room with that same antique bed, that bed I’d dreamed of so often, all those years, when I was lost and alone, wanting for all the world to come home.
Epilogue
After dinner, Ryder holds the door open and we sneak out onto the back deck. The night is crisp; it smells of hickory smoke. Leaves litter the grass.
He lifts me into his old macramé hammock, frayed and stained, but sturdy between two oaks, and climbs up next to me, smelling of the apple pie he made for Thanksgiving dinner. I can hear them in the living room, the twins’ high-pitched giggles, Luke’s baritone voice, Jamie in the kitchen, rinsing the dessert dishes. Ryder squeezes my thumbnail between his fingers, something I find strangely erotic, and that warmth rises from the bottom of my belly.
A warm breeze blows chimney smoke our way. “You think this Indian summer will last?” he asks.
I don’t answer, just lie back and weave my fingers through his. When I am an old woman, these are the days I’ll remember: Luke giving me away when Ryder and I got married during a blizzard; the morning our twins, Pipe
r and Will, were born; the night my dad was posthumously inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame.
Ryder puts his hand over his heart. He points at me with two fingers in the shape of a peace sign. It’s our code, our silent love song. I put my hand over my heart, too, and do the same sign back. And we keep wordlessly signing like that, back and forth, under the bright November stars.
* * *
It all seems so long ago. Will’s death, the first thing that fractioned my life, feels far away. And my father’s death is less constant, if not less painful. I finally realized the things that split me open, then halved me again and again never really broke me. Seventh grade prealgebra taught me you could divide a number forever and never reach zero. Perhaps the same holds true for a person.
My night blindness is gone. I noticed it that first fall I was back in Colston. I could see clearly again in the dark. I went to a specialist, who said the same thing as the doctor who’d diagnosed me. Malnutrition can cause nyctalopia. And proper nutrition can help reverse its effects. Now it’s the past that’s out of focus, hazy and fading. I’m beginning to forget the time before Will and my dad died. I see that part of my life as if I still had night blindness. I can make out faint images but not specific memories. There is no before. Nor is there an after. It’s only here. It’s only now.
Still, there are times I want to see Will riding that yellow horse around the carousel, run with him up Heartbreak Hill. I want to be standing at Caller’s Island, talking with my dad about his childhood, picnicking on the teak ketch he and Luke bought on a whim, racing down the Merritt in the car from The Graduate, or just sitting with him in the kitchen, reading the Sunday paper. But when I think back on those times, I can’t quite remember if that car was candy-apple red or maroon, or what songs we sang to on the radio. When nostalgia hits hard, sometimes I wish I could bring my night blindness into focus and see everything, even the hard parts, clearly again.
Night Blindness Page 28
